Old Conventional Wells in PA Causing Problems for New Shale Wells
Pennsylvania state officials estimate there are as many as 200,000 abandoned oil and gas wells in the state–the vast majority of them conventional wells drilled over 50 years ago. Most of them are not mapped or known. Some of them are hazards for shale drillers who stumble across them when drilling new wells. If you drill horizontally and clip an old/abandoned well, it becomes like an elevator pumping fluids and gas to the surface. Not good. Everyone is committed to finding and marking and capping these old wells. In March, MDN highlighted the issue (see Who Pays for Abandoned O&G Wells in PA?). Now Bloomberg is shining a light on abandoned oil wells–across the country but particularly in PA. Bloomberg calls them “lost wells”–which makes us think of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. But it’s no laughing matter. Abandoned wells are a nuisance at a minimum, and can be dangerous when drilling a shale well. The Bloomberg article says the PA Attorney General, Kathleen Kane (herself under indictment for felonies and in danger of being dragged out of office) is reviewing rules that will require shale drillers to document abandoned wells within 1,000 feet of new shale drill sites…
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In August 2013, Moxie Energy of Vienna, VA sold the permits/rights to build a new Marcellus gas-powered electric generating plant in Bradford County, PA to Panda Power Funds of Dallas, TX (see 
Last December Pennsylvania’s felony-indicted Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, brought a lawsuit against Chesapeake Energy, Anadarko and Williams accusing them of, among other things, royalty fraud (see 
Yesterday MDN brought you a story of how the Williams/Energy Transfer Equity merger defies logic (see Williams/ETE Merger Defies Logic – Here’s Why). Part of that story deconstructs the support for the deal by proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The analyst we quote in that article says ISS is buying Williams’ line that Williams’ assets after a merger with ETE will produce boatloads of cash and profit for the newly merged company, while the very same assets apart from the merger won’t. Even though the merged company will have an enormous load of new debt following the merger. It defies logic. And yet, Williams has found two more proxy advisory firms who are now willing to go on the record, like ISS, in support of the merger. What do they see that we don’t? Tune in to this episode of As the (Midstream) World Turns…
The Sierra Club is one of the worst, most radical Big Green groups in existence. We sincerely hope you never give them a penny of your money. They don’t care a whit about the environment–they only care about feeding the beast, money for their own organization. One way to do that is to keep your name in the news constantly. And a way to do that is by filing frivolous lawsuits. The Sierra Club has been railing against the Cove Point LNG export facility being built by Dominion for years (see 
Shell has long mystified us when it comes to shale. Shell has been involved in the Marcellus Shale for years with its SWEPI (Shell Western E&P) division–at one time with 900,000 acres under lease. But in 2014 Shell took an ax to its Marcellus drilling program (see 
LNG, or liquefied natural gas, is an increasingly important part of the natural gas ecosystem in the U.S. We’ve imported natgas for years–and we’re not beginning to export it as well. Each month the U.S. Dept. of Energy issues a report tabulating both imports and exports of LNG–who shipped it in and out, from where, and how much. It’s a good picture. The April report was recently released (takes a few months before the number crunchers are done). What do we find in the latest report (full copy below)? We find that the U.S. imported 34.8 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of natural gas in the first four months of the year–all of it from Trinidad. We exported 28.9 Bcf during the same period. The vast majority of exports were from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana, although a small amount of LNG was exported from American LNG’s export facility in Miami, Florida…
The “best of the rest” – stories that caught MDN’s eye that you may be interested in reading. In today’s lineup: NRDC Gang & The French Connection; PA rig count stabilizes; budget crunch deadline approaches in PA; nominations for Who’s Who in Energy; Raymond James sees oil at $80 in 2017/2018; EIA’s new data add-on tool for Google Sheets; another alarmist ethane study; LNG oversupply will stretch to 2024; and more!